Prison dogs kill feline drug dealer in 'arrest scuffle'

Russian drugs dealers thought they’d come up with the purr-fect crime when they enrolled a feline colleague to smuggle heroin into a jail in Tatarstan. The cat was commissioned to carry drugs into the prison in the town of Mendeleyevsk, but local police heard about the scam and were ready to feel the collar of the four-legged felon. Unfortunately the cat decided to find another way in and was greeted by guard dogs, and not people.

Without waiting for a trial the dogs leapt on their natural prey and the cat died of its injuries. The inhuman crime was very well prepared. A prisoner found a cunning way to get the cat out of jail and pass it on to local drug dealers. Starved for a few days, the unwitting mule was eager to get back to the jail where it had been adopted as a mascot by inmates who fed it regularly.



Loaded with 15 grams of heroin, taped to its collar, the cat was released near the prison gates and rushed home in the hope of dinner – only to fall foul of guard dogs before police could intercept the fluffy smuggler. “The patrol was expecting the cat to go one way, but it chose a different path though a ‘no-go’ area guarded by dogs,” Anton Shabardin from the local penitentiary service’s press-office said.

Despite this case being an outrageous example of animal rights violation, a criminal case has been opened over drug transfer charges. “We haven’t faxed Brigitte Bardot yet, so don’t really know what animal rights activists say about it,” Shabardin said. “Smuggling 15 grams of heroin is recognised as an especially large-scale drug transfer by law, and it’s a very serious crime anyway,” he said explaining that animal involvement might not be recognised as an aggravation.